Baghdad = Lagos

One of the answers to all that pesky carping about the so far invisible WMDs in Iraq has been along the lines of: we got rid of Saddam, surely the Iraqi people will wind up better off? Fine, if by better off one means ending up like Nigeria. In other words, an oil rich country with an oil production enclave and 95 percent of the population on the outside looking in. Warning sign: why is an oil producer importing oil?

Saunders [USAID] said KBR [Halliburton] is buying oil from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Turkey to meet desperate shortages, especially in Baghdad, where there recently was only a five-day supply of gasoline.

It happens in Nigeria all the time.